Proposal: a WordPress Advisory Board

Update, Aug 13: There seems to be general consensus that this should move forward. There were a lot of questions raised and identified risks to be aware of, so I’ll draft a post with next steps and get the foundational work done. Thank you to everyone who participated! Comments are now closed. ~Josepha

At the end of 2016, Matt created two growth councils to amplify efforts to bring open source to a wider audience, and fulfill the WordPress mission to democratize publishing. Last December, they held their final meeting — I was fortunate to work with both of these groups, and am so grateful for the way the people involved generously donated their time to the project.

My Takeaways

During the 10 months that I met with them, I saw many things that worked and learned about many things that didn’t.

Working: There were a variety of markets represented, and people at the top of their field across the board. Every member came with a feeling of selfless coopetition that drew them together. There was a lot of insight at each table and a lot of opportunity to see a bigger picture than usual.

Not Working: Gathering everyone monthly was difficult and keeping work moving between meetings was a struggle. Decisions became prone to analysis paralysis. It was unclear how to step up or step back as time and circumstances required.

I think that holding on to what worked could be a major win for the WordPress project overall, if we can find a way to clear away the things that didn’t work.

Proposal: a WordPress Advisory Board

Who: A nomination-based group made up of members of the WordPress ecosystem, with set term limits.What: A traditional advisory board providing information on industry trends and risks as well as non-binding strategic advice to the Project Lead and Executive Director.When: Meeting quarterly.Where: Video calls with high level notes published afterward.Bonus: The Executive Director (me!) will be a permanent observer and facilitator of the advisory board meetings, and Matt will attend some, but not all meetings.

Additional Clarifications

On nominations: I think that a traditional board process of nomination and self-nomination will serve this group well. Good ideas can come from anywhere, and open nomination process can help get voices that might otherwise not be heard. I would like to reserve the right to invite nominees (for diversity and representation purposes) which will be key for keeping a well-rounded group on hand. Existing members select candidates from nominees.

On non-binding strategic advice: I am not proposing that this group would function as a final-say, decision-making body for the WordPress project. It should serve as a collection of bright, insightful people who have contact with clients and end-users of WordPress. This removes the “analysis paralysis” challenge that the growth councils faced.

On set term limits: Since, in my mind, the group won’t be a direct decision-making body and won’t have any fiduciary duties, I would suggest some flexibility in setting term limits as we get started. My ideal is a 2 year limit, though there is wisdom in a shorter limit, too.

Next Steps

I’d like to open the comments to discuss this idea. If feedback is broadly supportive, let’s start with the following steps:

As a proof of concept, assemble the existing growth council members into the first iteration of the Advisory Board.

Start this initial group with a 12 month term (taking us to the middle of 2020).

Publish an announcement that includes 1) who is on the advisory board, 2) companies/verticals represented on the advisory board, and 3) information on how to nominate yourself or others for future participation.

If you have feedback on or questions about this proposal, please share that in a comment on this post!

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This is exciting! There’s a lot of potential here for sure. A group of people that represent different markets, different ways that WordPress is used, and even different sets of WordPress users could bring a lot of valuable information and knowledge to the project, given a channel like this to surface it in.

I think a two year limit is a pretty good starting place. It’s enough to get people functioning together well with the group (that’s only eight quarterly meetings) but short enough to hopefully prevent people from becoming inured.

I also love the transparency of announcing who is on the advisory board, what companies (if any) they represent, etc. Maybe this could become an update page somewhere instead of, or in addition to, a post?

Question: Would the plan be to replace people on a rotating basis or replace the entire group at once every term?

Replacing everyone at the same time leads to more contained admin time, but replacing in waves ensures some consistency and hands-on training. I’m not sure the best choices long-term, but I think that at the end of this initial term, everyone changes.

What I’ve participated in previously was where half the board was elected to a lesser term than the other half. That way there was some “institutional memory” and allowed for fewer people to get caught up with how the board functions.

Having been a part of a year-limit similarish position, I think two years is actually good. The problem with one year is that by the time you get your feet well under you and used to what you’re doing, and have that confidence, it’s time to leave. That’s why term-limits for things like senators etc work okay at 4 years. 🙂 For the smaller size of WP, 2 year seems reasonable.

Exciting to see how this evolves! I agree with what’s set above on a 2 year term. I also consider Aaron’s question and think about cons and pro’s about rotating people or replace the entire group at once every term.

Sounds really great to me.
I also agree with the arguments for a 2 year term.
Though we could set up a compromise:
Like a 2 years term, with half (or a third) of the council rotating every year. Then we could start in mid 2019 with (arbitrary and not real figures) 10 people, add 10 more people at mid-2020, rotate the 10 first people mid-2021, etc. 🙂

IMHO — basically just a sorta gut feeling — perhaps a very small minority rotation would be best (for the sake of consistency) … e.g. out of 15 rotate 3 every quarter (does that mean the term would be 5/4 years? ) or maybe out of 15 rotate 5 every year (term of 3 years). Another thing to think about: is “after the rotation” = “before the rotation” (WRT nominations, etc.) — in other the words: how much time / effort / similar resources be “wasted” on stuff like proposals, plans, visions, campaigning and so on?

Is there a list of members of both councils available? I was only able to find membership from the enterprise council meeting notes and I’m concerned that the membership doesn’t reflect the diversity of our community.

Overall I think this is great, but I do think it is very important to make sure a diverse array of voices are represented in the advisory council.

I agree wholeheartedly that diversity is a hugely important part of this group’s function. There isn’t a published list for both councils right now, but I will include the roster in follow up posts to this one!

Sounds good and promising! Like others, I feel that two years is a good time for board membership. And again as Aaron questioned before, I feel that the board members should be rotating instead of choosing a completely new board every two years. Of course, this leads to a situation, where some board members will work for one or three years when the board is formed – but I don’t see that as a problem because the rotation will settle after first members leaving.

I think the 2 years limit is just the right amount of time. Not too short that the board won’t have time to implement their ideas and not too long that would make it look like WordPress is no longer “community-driven”.

I’m excited to see how all this goes and what impact would the Board bring.

It is extremely common in most boards of 7 or more, to have at least 1 seat occupied by a representative of “the people” (as opposed to professionals or the like) and in my experience this has always brought much needed perspective.

A non-WordPress representative could fill the above seat, as they generally meet the requirement of being unaffiliated to WordPress in any way.

Long’ish-term, there is a bigger opportunity (and more value) in having liaisons or representatives from as many other projects as possible in their own advisory group to the advisory group. Again, this is a relatively common practice to keep groups of people on-task and limit their scope of work.

I agree with what you say JJJ. My only reason for suggesting an external representative (which is common for boards like this) is that WordPress very much operates like an independent lonely island in the middle of a vast ocean while in reality we’re more like a large state within the country of web dev. Having someone from the outside poke holes in the bubble and remind us of this fact from time to time is useful.

May I suggest that this WordPress Advisory council (or congress) have clearly defined mission, operating procedures, rules of governance an bylaws publicly available. Also ensure that the member nomination and removal processes are clearly defined.

Additionally if the term is limit is to be 2 years, then split membership such that only 50% of this group would rotate out in a given year.

Keeping bylaws and operating procedures public helps everyone (including board members) understand what is expected of them, and holds everyone accountable to those guidelines.

Splitting the term is important so that new members to the group are not 100% all-new at the same time, and have multiple people around them with institutional knowledge about the current goals and initiatives.

This is very promising!
When the living documentation of the existing ecosystem (UX research, scenarios, personas, journey maps, and diagrams) becomes useful for facilitating communication and collective understanding we could consider making it part of the Advisory Council’s handbook too. It will be important to tend to the on-going and fluid nature of this UX work as well.

We are working on a visual diagram of the WordPress Project too. Useful so new and existing contributors can see how the WordPress Project is structured as viewed from 20,000 feet. I can visualize the Advisory Committee in the diagram now!

A simple, clearly documented governance model is important for the health of the WordPress Project, our economic investments, and our kind, beloved community.

I think that 2-year term would be a good max, seeing that this is quarterly.

I’m sure there are lot of specifics around guidelines, etc. that will need to be ironed out, but the key will be to find that sweet top in not only general diversity, but diversity in the sense of WordPress knowledge, experience and usage.

My eyebrows raised at the specific inclusion of the phrase “non-binding strategic advice to the Project Lead” (emphasis in my head on “non-binding”) as a way of essentially giving (before the board starts) a feel that this might be just more of the same, where we in the community are asked for our opinion, but then fairly routinely feel ignored or condescended to by the project lead.

So my main concern would be how this is going to be different? At the end of the day, it’s still Matt’s party, and he can do what he wishes. I’d love to see true governance here, where Matt submits a bit more officially to the board.

I genuinely do appreciate the steps for things to be made more transparent, and for more diverse voices to have Matt’s ear and to advise.

Last thought: I think the only way it works is with something better than “high level notes” from the meetings. I’d strongly prefer full transcripts of the meetings, for lots of reasons. Will the calls be recorded and published?

The non-binding part definitely is something that I expected would give people pause. The intent behind that is not to set up a situation where all advice is refused. It’s more to help set the expectation (for current and future members) that advising on this board is different from mandating.

In my experience, advisory boards are able to collect a lot more knowledge than any single person could, and as a result often do end up with really excellent strategic advice, though!

I am concerned over nominations as a practice as i believe this will skew towards certain people and not always people who have the best skills for the job.

I’m fully committed to diversity, which, without knowing the board size is hard to balance with nominations?

Is the work also to be paid? If not, I’d worry people would try to gain economically from their board membership and so two years is as vast time period. If there are a lot of people who can be on the board (i.e. no shortage) then i think shorter terms are fairier to the ‘ecosystem’. Choosing term lengths before knowing what the board will do seems somewhat redundant.

I would propose the board is composed of nominations, democratically voted for members and should these not meet known doversity targets, extra seats to address these issues (diversity members can be added at any point)

I aldo think amyone should be able to present a “green paper” (uk political term) to the board and expect a fair consideration of it

Nominations in this case can be self-nominated as well as nominated by others. But I agree there is absolutely a risk in ending up with a bunch of very similar people, so I appreciate that red flag!

The work won’t be paid, but also won’t be too substantial. I definitely see that economic gain is something to be aware of — I think a conflict of interest statement could be the way to set expectations there.

Green papers certainly seem like something to consider as the board matures, especially as we progress past this particular point in the discussion (of can we or can’t we even form the board). :fingerscrossed:

For some reason, the last 3 bullet points breezed right past my eyeballs on my first read through of this.

As a proof of concept, assemble the existing growth council members into the first iteration of the Advisory Board.

Does this mean the Growth Council disappears and becomes the Advisory Group? If so, does it make sense to include their names in this post right away for folks that do not know?

Start this initial group with a 12 month term (taking us to the middle of 2020).

If the above is true, then I think this makes sense, because they’ve already been at it for about a year. Mikel does bring up really good points about splitting the membership so that there isn’t a completely new roster every term that I think should be revisited.

Publish an announcement that includes 1) who is on the advisory board, 2) companies/verticals represented on the advisory board, and 3) information on how to nominate yourself or others for future participation.

Nominations are only one side of this coin, and I hate to work ahead, but who ultimately decides who, when, and why? I have no qualms with people being appointed, but I feel it is very important to be open, transparent, and clear about why some people are selected and not others. This isn’t school-yard dodge ball anymore, and people deserve to know what why they didn’t make the cut.

Would be to standup an interim council/board/group/gaggle whatever you call it with a clearly defined mission to openly define and build out the advisory “thingie”. Those initial members would have a term limit of one year to get it done and their first order of business should be definition and acceptance of the nominees for 2 year terms. This automatically sets up the transition of authority as well as splits the membership nomination and election process.

Their second order of business should be to openly define the official by-laws under-which they continue operate.

Do not underestimate how much work goes into this process. The minutia can be mind numbingly soul crushing and life draining.

terms. Maybe according to “duties” some roles could be 2 yrs, some 1 (operations can turnover faster, strategic would need full 2 years. Also, there could be some overlap (3/6 mos?) for old and new members to align

I am presuming that though only meeting quarterly, the board will be actively at work and will need to be dedicated (albeit to an extent) this brings next point

compensation: if the aim is diversity and full representation – and to ensure neutrality – positions should be compensated, otherwise only people whose time is paid will be able to participate.

I’ve never been compensated for my participation in these sorts of groups so that would be nice. At the very least it would be nice if there were some sort of travel reimbursement in the event that the group need to meet face to face.

In the initial iteration of this board, the work won’t be substantial — there’s no expectation of producing reports, adjudicating disagreements, or managing projects. With that in mind I don’t think there will be compensation immediately (though if the board changes into something else I think it’s open to discussion).

For full transparency, my experience on advisory boards is similar to Mikel’s, where the members are not compensated.

Very exciting, finally!
But an advisory board will only be a success if the advice would be taken for real. That’s what i’m missing here, that aspect seems already a bit countered here in the sentence:not proposing that this group would function as a final-say, decision-making body for the WordPress project

To be clear, i think it’s a fantastic idea. But i’m afraid it also could end up in big frustrations if it has so real impact. Raise the bar here. Why not bring the decissions to the advisory table?

Other notes:

Meeting quarterly is too long: so, if you miss one meeting, a half year passes by. I think 2-monthly would be better.

Raffella brings up the ‘funding’. Some may know what’s my opinion is about that. (yes, we need to be able to fund people) I think WP is at a phase where some tasks just can’t be handled by pure volunteers and need full time employees. I’ll guess Josepha couldn’t do these amazing task in her spare time too.

I also think that meeting only quarterly is too long. As Josepha points out, keeping work moving between meetings can be a struggle. Meeting every other month might move projects forward or keep conversations going more successfully. I could also see smaller project-based meetings on the alternate months to make sure progress is being made to contribute to the larger conversation.

The intent behind “non-binding” is not to set up a situation where all advice is refused. It’s more to help set the expectation (for current and future members) that advising on this board is different from mandating.

The timing is negotiable — I think an important thing to note is that I don’t expect there to be any projects for this board to manage. So, instead of fixing the “hard to keep work moving between meetings” by adjusting the meetings, I’m hoping to fix it by removing the expectation of work.

I’d worry people would try to gain economically from their board membership

As with the Growth Council, this proposal is about the WordPress software offering’s position in “markets”, not the WordPress project’s position in the open web. The potential for it to become a de facto corporate lobbying group steering the project towards its own commercial interests – which may not be in the interests of the open web, or its users – is blindingly obvious. With no transparent community-based project governance running in parallel to this advisory board, there are no safeguards in place to ensure that corporate capture doesn’t happen.

Of course, this isn’t uncharted territory. The Drupal Association has a Board of Directors, consisting of 11-15 directors. The project founder has a permanent seat; all others have fixed terms. They also have a separate advisory board, of a similar size. I am certain that DA folks would be happy to share their experience and advice with us. We could do worse than simply copying their model as a starting point.

I would like to see some clearer examples of the tasks which this Board might take on. For example, would the Project Lead or Executive Director be required to present an annual strategy to the Board, and take their questions? Could release leads be required to present a retrospective after each release? Would the Board sign off on ‘State Of The Word’ each year? Would the Board have a role in endorsing key appointments, such as the Executive Director?

I welcome the commitment to diversity and representation.

As well as human diversity, I hope our definition of diversity will include things like: geography (all continents represented please!), area of business activity (agencies, hosting companies, plugin creators, users) and ‘market level’ (amateur, freelance, small business, large enterprise).

And I hope Board members will be tasked with acting as representatives, bringing not only their own personal thoughts, but those of the diverse communities they come from. They should be encouraged, perhaps even required to blog, tweet, speak and engage; and to reflect back what they hear.

I applaud this step forward, and am excited to see how it develops and how it furthers WordPress.

Having served on boards before (and a School Board for 12 years), I’d like to offer my perspective.

I would recommend a 3-year term, where 1/3 of the board rotates out annually, for better continuity. There is always a learning curve when starting on a board, and getting up to speed just in time to step off doesn’t serve the purpose of a board well, and eventually feels like your contributions as a board member are minimal. Losing half your board every year also hurts the continuity of purpose and momentum that you build…especially with a board the size you’re proposing.

I agree with others here that diversity in many areas is really important, and having people from many locations, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and prior involvement in the open source project is paramount. Getting perspective from many areas will be key to moving forward in the most strategic way. I also agree that compensating the board will be key in getting true diversity for those who wouldn’t be able to afford to participate because they aren’t working for larger companies or are newer in the WordPress space, or are the outside perspective.

I am less concerned about the potential for a board to move in the direction of self-service as the right components through designated diversity (as stated above and by others) should serve to self-govern that kind of behavior. That said, having the board be advisory will also allow for checks and balances as it is not an oligarchy with final say. Working transparently will also aid in an altruistic board.

I’m so pleased with this initiative. Thank you, Josepha, for putting this forward.

Semi-related to all of this, I do worry about over-architecting the board at the early points. Any time I create “mission critical” type processes, I have to be on the lookout for how to absorb that work should a volunteer be unable to do it. So I try to make things light, but clearly organized (which I realize is counterintuitive in a way), and let the processes get more structured as it starts to be sustainable.

I think this is a great idea and I fully support it. Most of my thoughts come from the term “advisory.”

I’ve been on several advisory boards / committees for software companies since 2000. I hope these observations will help you think about this dynamic. If they’re not helpful, ignore them.

These have been my observations:

– Advisors are not leveraged for their expertise enough (beyond quarterly meetings) because no one wants to put too much on their plate, and as a result, the advice given and the impact from it tends to be pretty small.

– The day to day work of a business / project is far removed from the advisors. So the advice they give, the topics they cover, is pretty far removed from the actual situation. In a fixed set of minutes, there’s not enough time to get into nuance. So you end up with great and fantastic advice that doesn’t apply to the actual situation.

Advisors are all pretty similar. No joke, I was once in a room where every single person had the same color pants and the same color shirt (though there were variations of the blue shirt). This leads to group think in a pretty big way. And it’s tough for advisors who see the world differently to share their insight.

As a result of these dynamics, most of the advisory boards don’t do much. They flip over every year or two, mostly because advisors don’t feel the engagement or impact of their role (if there was to be any impact other than the press release).

From your note it doesn’t sound like this board is a determining / decision-making body. And that’s fine. But it brought up all these memories of meetings that didn’t do much. I’m not sure what the answers are. I just know some of where the challenges lie and wanted to make sure you were able to think about them.

Either way, I think it’s a great idea to bring folks together to have some conversations about the project that could help drive its success.

This is great, first off. I think something like this is overdue for WordPress and the community stands to benefit from it.

In the post, there’s a great outline of What, Who, When, etc. but not a “Why”. Why would an advisory board exist? What is its reason for being? How is it measured for effectiveness?

Is it safe to assume the new board would continue the councils’ purpose: “to amplify efforts to bring open source to a wider audience, and fulfill the WordPress mission to democratize publishing?”

Beyond the “Why” – I’m in favor of 2-year seats. I think no more than 50% should turnover at any time in order to preserve ideas and momentum. Quarterly meetings make sense, but every other month is a good idea. Frequency is probably tied to the goals of the board.

I’m so glad that you asked this question — I’ve spent a lot of time with the “why” of this group and I have some thoughts. I wonder if amplifying the benefits of open source/WordPress/etc is more of a useful byproduct of this group’s work.

It’s been a very long time since one person could know everything about the WordPress project. In order to keep track of every potential challenge and opportunity available across this ecosystem it would take eight of me — which is certainly a terrifying thought! My hope is that by having a lot of different perspectives there is a chance to 1) see patterns where otherwise they could be missed and 2) get better signal to noise for every team we have.

All in all I think the idea of a community sourced advisory board is a good one and that this proposal is a step in the right direction.

I’ll echo several others’ comments in that a clear statement of purpose or mission should be provided for the board (and the community). In the current proposed form, “information on industry trends and risks as well as non-binding strategic advice” isn’t specific enough to know how that information will be used for the benefit of the (1) the project leaders, (2) the project, and (3) the community.

Ideally there are criteria the community can use to measure the board’s progress as objectively as possible.

Two year terms make sense. I like the idea of rotating people out at different times so that a mix of new and experienced board members are participating. Quarterly seems like a long time between meetings, though I know monthly could be tough to wrangle.

And in that communication is oxygen, it’d be very excellent to see frequently published thoughts from everyone on the advisory board. An objective like that might also need something like “a time investment of X hours per month is expected for this role.”

It seems like compensation could help add importance to the amount of time required and provide an opportunity for folks that may not have that time freely available.

I think the Advisory Board is a great step for WordPress as a whole, and it goes good as far as the new leadership roles and the organizational structure that I think WordPress as a group is trying to take on. WordPress should take a more influential role within the Internet space and work on affecting some of the policies that could make the Internet safer and better for everyone.

We as a community need to spread the word about what it is that WordPress does, and what the mission of the WordPress community is and go back to advancing the Internet and web development best practices even if you are not a developer.

That is what I think the WordPress Advisory Council would be best suited to do. Because I know that the Executive team gets so many requests it is hard for them to prioritize what tasks to tackle next.

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